Artificial intelligence start-up Senseye has raised £3.5 million in a Series A funding round led by MMC Ventures.

The Southampton-based firm enables industrial companies to predict the failure of machines months in advance, using machine learning algorithms fed with data from the Industrial Internet of Things.

The round was also supported by existing investors Breed Reply, IQ Capital and Momenta Partners.

“We’re delighted to have secured the right capital and strategic partners to help us to accelerate our success,” said Senseye CEO Dr Simon Kampa, who co-founded the company in 2014.

“We’re confidently on the way to making unplanned machine downtime a thing of the past and leading an emerging $5 billion market.”

Already trusted by a growing number of Fortune 500 industrial and manufacturing companies, including leading global automotive and automation brands, the company will use the capital to meet customer demand for its automated condition monitoring diagnostics and prognostics product.

Senseye says users can benefit from up to a 40 per cent reduction in maintenance costs, as well as lowering unplanned downtime by up to 50 per cent.

The product requires no additional hardware or customisation, which means it can be installed quickly, realising the benefits almost immediately.

At the core of Senseye are the product’s unique advanced prognostics algorithms, which enable manufacturers to monitor and understand the remaining useful life of thousands of machines based at multiple sites – without the need for on-site expert technical input.

Simon Menashy, partner at MMC Ventures, said: "We believe that predictive analytics is going to have a transformative impact on industrial companies over the next decade.

“Over the past year we have met and assessed more than 250 companies applying AI and machine learning technologies across every sector - Senseye's mix of cutting-edge data science and deep understanding of engineering puts them amongst the very best we have seen.

“I'm excited to work with them to create some of that transformation and build a big company in the process."